"I rejoice that freedom of speech and the right of self-defence cannot be curtailed"

The following quote is an expanded version of a former post found here:

   "Ours is a written constitution. The powers and privileges of Congress, which may be in some measure regarded as distinct, are there laid down. We cannot transcend them. Any effort to enlarge them would be to usurp from the people authority heretofore not granted to us by them . . ."

"...Suppose a citizen should shut himself up in his castle, and resist your process even unto the death of your officer; would you try, and condemn, and execute him? How, when, where? Suppose your Sergeant should apply to a magistrate of this city for a posse comitatus, and be refused, would you punish the magistrate for a contempt? Can you punish editors who speak contemptuously of your proceedings? If so, God help the letter writers! Can you convert this House into a judicial tribunal, which shall be judge, witness, accuser, and prosecutor, in its own case, and inflict any punishment it chooses? If so, where is the freedom of the citizen, where our boasted trial by jury; where that "due process of law," that "liberty" guarantied by the constitution? Carry Out these undefined, discretionary doctrines, and it will demonstrate either your unbounded power or your utter impotency. Tell me not, sir, of the precedents of the British Parliament. That is a body confessedly omnipotent. This is one of limited powers. Their claim to punish for offences of this nature is drawn from a system of recognised law. We are mere agents for the exercise of limited and specific grants; and I thank God that it is so. I rejoice that freedom of speech and the right of self-defence cannot be curtailed; that all your enactments in relation to are void; that gentlemen cannot, if they would, have a legislative auto da fe, and burn every man for contempt who will not follow them or applaud their acts."

--Mr. John Francis Hamtramck Clairborne,  U.S. Representative from Mississippi, Feb. 10, 1837. [DEBATES IN CONGRESS PART II OF VOL. XIII. REGISTER OF DEBATES IN CONGRESS, COMPRISING THE LEADING DEBATES AND INCIDENTS OF THE SECOND SESSION OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH CONGRESS: TOGETHER WITH AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING IMPORTANT STATE PAPERS AND PUBLIC DOCUMENTS, AND THE LAWS, OF A PUBLIC NATURE, ENACTED DURING THE SESSION: WITH A COPIOUS INDEX TO THE WHOLE. VOLUME XIII. WASHINGTON: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY GALES AND SEATON. 1837. Pgs. 1691-93]